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Is the URL As Dead As the Phone Number and Address?

It was only a matter of time. The recent announcement by ICANN that they would add an indefinite number of vanity suffixes to the top level domains of the DNS system (making it so that, for instance, you can _finally_ register www.fuckyeah.xfiles for...

It was only a matter of time. The recent announcement by ICANN that they would add an indefinite number of vanity suffixes to the top level domains of the DNS system (making it so that, for instance, you can finally register www.fuckyeah.xfiles for your TV show fan site) has been said to signal a new era for the domain name system.

Maybe the end of it.

.homeboyz could be on the way: NTV Kenya

We can and do already offset our memory for our phone numbers to our computers, and we can and do find ways to offset the very difficult task of typing in an address too. It's already happening in real life. To get to a place in the city, often I'll slip out my phone and type the address if I know it, but more often the name of the place. The physical address may or may not flash on the screen, but all we care about is that the icon appears on the map where it should. Press "Directions" and "Go," and you're off. And you're off addresses potentially forever.

(This is of course if Google Maps is working; on my old iPhone, sometimes the application slows to a crawl after I type in the first two letters; needless to say, when I'm trying to go somewhere I haven't been before now — and even places I have but the way to which I have forgotten — I learn the hard way the effects of offsetting something as fundamental as wayfinding skills to a computer.)

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By the logic of the social network, companies presumably want people to search for their websites rather than remember their addresses and click to them directly. Unlike direct traffic, those searches can only serve to boost their page rankings. And this is more important: searching for a site within the walls of a Google or a Facebook helps to enrich the data collection of those sites, making it easier for said companies to define you and locate you in other ways.

Of course, some sites, like amazon.com (perhaps only amazon.com), rely on their fancy URL for recognition. But rhyming aside, that has little more relevance than, say, 740 Park, an address that, by its numbers and avenue name, has transmutated from a simple location identifier into an icon, a symbol, for a location identifier. No one thinks about this building as being the 740th address on Park Avenue. They think about the way the numbers seven forty and the word park sound together: like Manhattan royalty. Amazon dot com: books, reliability, everything else besides books, recommendations. Not, mind you, a fragile rainforest river, but giant warehouses filling orders around the clock, and promises that if you order in the next three hours…

This is a website that gives you recommendations all the time, without your even asking, and allows you to make purchases with a single click. Do you really think the actual address still matters? What might we do, it's worth asking, on that inevitable day comes when we can't even remember the name of the website we're looking for? Surely there will be an app for that, one that reads your thoughts without you having to so much as lift an eyelash.

We're already on the way there: you don't even need to type in the .com after Google anymore. Heck, you don't even need to type Google. Thanks to the wonders of Google Instant, all you need to do is type goo and you're back right at the beginning of all learning, where the Internet has you, with the goo goos and the Gagas.

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